For active families short on time preparing nutritious meals can be challenging. Planning and organizing save time and aggravation when kids are screaming for dinner! Create weekly dinner menus and shortcut dinner prep by precutting vegetables, buying bagged spinach, and precooking rice.

5 Healthy Kid-Friendly Meals

Get your weekly dinner plan started with these five delicious dinners your kids will love.

Crockpot Brown Rice Risotto

With this healthier brown rice version of risotto, make it vegetarian night! Increase its protein content by adding chickpeas. Serve with tossed salad and Oatmeal Chipits for dessert.

Since this risotto cooks in a crockpot, dinner will be almost ready when you get home.

Turkey Sausage, Home Fries and Steamed Broccoli

With leaner protein, turkey sausages are nutritious and can be grilled, baked or pan fried. When shopping for turkey sausages, be sure to buy ones with no added ingredients like corn syrup or preservatives.

Accompany sausages with steamed broccoli and oven baked Home Fries. For dessert, serve fruit cups topped with yogurt, honey and sliced almonds.

Weekday Meatloaf, Steamed Rice or Quinoa, and Spinach Salad

On busy weeknights, meatloaf is the perfect make-ahead meal. Save more time by baking it for 30 minutes before storing in fridge. Finish cooking for about another 30 minutes before serving.

As a side to meatloaf, add brown rice or quinoa. To cooked rice or quinoa, mix chopped carrots, red peppers, dried cranberries, sliced almonds, 1 tablespoon olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Complete the meal with a simple spinach or tossed salad and homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette.

Gluten-Free Soba Noodles Pasta with Tuna/Salmon/Tofu

Soba Noodles

Oat Squares

Soba noodles are a great gluten-free alternative for pasta dishes as they are made from buckwheat flour, which is not related to wheat. However, when buying soba noodles, be sure to carefully read labels as some soba noodles are made with a combination of buckwheat and wheat flour.

When prepared with a simple sauce of sauteed vegetables along with tuna, salmon or tofu, this dish provides a balanced source of essential nutrients. A green salad on the side and Oat Squares for dessert complete the meal.

Banana Blueberry Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs and Green Beans

Breakfast at dinner? Kids love pancakes any time of the day. These pancakes made from scratch taste so good and are easy to whip up. To flapjacks, add scrambled eggs, or eggs any style, and steamed green beans with a squeeze of lemon or orange.

Serve a fabulous dessert of fresh fruit (strawberries, bananas, pineapple) with chocolate dip by heating up 1 cup dark chocolate with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil in double boiler until melted. Let the kids dip to their heart’s content!

Now Serving: Weekday dinners made simple!

(note: we originally published this article on EthicalDeal.com’s blog site)